January 26, 2008

Nashville Frag Swap

My husband Reilly and I visited Middle Tennessee Reef Club’s 4th annual Nashville Frag Swap on January 19th. The frag swap was quite a success. There were so many people there trading, selling, and buying coral frags and supplies. I saw a number of members from North Alabama Reef Club (NARC) that I belong to and others whom I came to know through the past frag swaps. It was great to see all these familiar faces. Needless to say it was fun meeting some new people, too.

Here are some pictures from the swap. I don’t know how many people attended the meeting, but it was rather crowded as you can tell from the picture.

Here’s Harry from NARC with a bunch of frags for sale.

People were busy checking out the frags for sale.

I had a number of them for sale as well. Next to me is Reilly, and next to him is another NARC member Steve (Mariner.)

There were a lot of nice raffle prizes and door prizes, including some yet-to-be-released ORA corals, some high end reef equipment and a complete Red Sea Max set up.

I was lucky enough to win Baensch’s Marine Atlas, $10 gift certificate from a reef store in Nashville area, and a very nice colony of green Ricordiayuma this time.

I also attended the lecture by Dr. Ron Shimek on the state of world’s coral reef. He took us through the evolution process of corals and talked to us about what we hobbyists can do to help preserve them. It was a great presentation. Unfortunately something else started just as his Q&A session started and I had to leave the lecture to attend the next event.

Later in the fragging workshop MTRC members fragged a large leather and a lime green table acropora colony. I was very happy to receive a very nice frag of the table acropora since I wanted to try my hand at a table acropora ever since I saw the pictures of beautiful table acropora colonies growing in a few Japanese reef enthusiasts tanks.

All in all, it was a fun-filled wonderful day. I believe everyone had a great time. I hope the next one in June in Knoxville, TN will be as good as this one.